Another Smithsonian Bad-News Day: Betsy Broun Gets a Bum Rap

Score a scoop coup for Jason Edward Kaufman in The Art Newspaper, for this report posted Tuesday (and cited yesterday by the Washington Post) about the highly critical findings, publicly released yesterday, of a panel of major museum professionals charged with a comprehensive review of the Smithsonian's constituent art institutions.

Appointed by Ned Rifkin, the Smithsonian's undersecretary for art, the panel consisted of: Michael Conforti, director of the Clark Art Institute; Vishakha Desai, president and CEO of the Asia Society; Susana Torruella Leval, director emerita of El Museo Del Barrio; Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art; Michael Shapiro, director of the High Museum; John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum; James Wood, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

The panel's full report is here.

The experts assert that the Smithsonian's art institutions are "drastically underfunded" and they take some unhelpful swipes at architectural deficiencies not easily ameliorated: The Hirshhorn, for example, is criticized for its "unpleasant concrete surface; difficult access; 'uninviting' sunken sculpture garden." It's too late for a do-over by the late founder, Joseph Hirshhorn, and the late Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Gordon Bunshaft, isn't it?

The report is especially critical of the leadership of the recently reopened National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, collectively now known as the Reynolds Center. These museums, the report says, should be merged under one director and a "national search should be undertaken for an outstanding leader who could fully understand and realize the potential of this...organization." Marc Pachter, director of the National Portrait Gallery, has already announced his plan to retire in October.

So the brunt of the criticism falls on longtime SAAM director Elizabeth Broun, who must feel stung by the report's comment that "we see a need for a better-balanced intellectual approach to the presentation of the collections and exhibitions, which have suffered from an undue emphasis on social history, politics, and interpretive rhetoric."

To be fair, here's Broun's side of the story, explaining why her institution presents its collections with a historical, rather than art-historical, approach. When I visited SAAM and the NPG last summer for my Wall Street Journal article on the reopening, Broun told me:

We made a conscious decision to install [the works in the collection] and interpret them with a focus on the broader context they reveal. We said: "We're in Washington and we think the art community will come anyway. We need to be cognizant of the fact that most of our attendance tends to be tourists and international visitors. Oftentimes they come without major background in art, but they're very interested in the American experience. And they come to us in part because we're an American art museum and because we share the building with the National Portrait Gallery.

So let's focus on that aspect. Art always in one way or another reflects the time in which it was made. We'll sort of pull that thread when we do labels and interpretation. We're not doing illustrations to a through-written narrative. We're just taking the works we love, treating each one individually but looking to find what it tells about something broader in American life and experience. If you look at each art work, we hope you feel connected to something in that period, that age, that time.

I think there's something to be said for taking a different approach from the traditional art-museum treatment accorded to American art at the world-class institution close by---the National Gallery. I have some quibbles with SAAM's installation of its permanent collection, but I think that by and large, if taken on its own terms, it works. If you've read my WSJ piece, you know that I believe that the panel's attack on the mixed quality of the NPG's offerings is valid.

The report gives particularly low marks to the National Museum of African Art:

There has been a longstanding lack of visionary leadership at the museum. The director's protracted illness, the absence of either a deputy director or chief curator, and curatorial departments that are either understaffed or underperforming, contribute to the present discouraging situation. Staff and trustee morale is dangerously low.

At least Paul Farhi, reporting in the Washington Post, has eased our minds about one troubling finding:

The committee said repairs to the museum buildings "are urgently needed" and warned that leaks in the Freer and Sackler's storage areas threaten their collections. Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said that the criticism was "outdated." She said any artworks in vulnerable areas are protected by plastic.

Plastic! That's so reassuring!

Speaking of the Smithsonian's woes: Tyler Green provided links yesterday to the Washington Post's continuing follow-ups on the Lawrence Small compensation controversies, uncovering alleged irregularities that go beyond the initial reports of a mere $90,000 in questionable expenses over six years. And the NY Times yesterday weighed in on this controversy here.